It is therefore happy, that nature
has allowed us a more certain and easy road to plenty; every man may
grow rich by contracting his wishes, and by quiet acquiescence in what
has been given him, supply the absence of more.
Yet so far is almost every man from emulating the happiness of the gods,
by any other means than grasping at their power, that it seems to be the
great business of life to create wants as fast as they are satisfied. It
has been long observed by moralists, that every man squanders or loses a
great part of that life, of which every man knows and deplores the
shortness: and it may be remarked with equal justness, that though every
man laments his own insufficiency to his happiness, and knows himself a
necessitous and precarious being, incessantly soliciting the assistance
of others, and feeling wants which his own art or strength cannot
supply; yet there is no man, who does not, by the superaddition of
unnatural cares, render himself still more dependent; who does not
create an artificial poverty, and suffer himself to feel pain for the
want of that, of which, when it is gained, he can have no enjoyment.
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